Date: Thu, 11 Apr 1996 15:09:24 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> To: kaleb@x.org (Kaleb S. KEITHLEY) Cc: jkh@time.cdrom.com, hackers@freefall.freebsd.org Subject: Re: DVORAK keyboard drivers Message-ID: <199604112209.PAA05133@phaeton.artisoft.com> In-Reply-To: <199604111934.PAA10893@exalt.x.org> from "Kaleb S. KEITHLEY" at Apr 11, 96 03:34:49 pm
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> > Well, two wrongs don't make a right. > > This kind of rhetoric just pegs my bullshit meter. Pegs my pun meter: But two Wrights make an airplane". > > Sorry Kaleb, but xf86config is a creeping undead abortion from the > > foulest pit of Hell. > > I guess XFree86 has the same sort of problem that FreeBSD does in getting > people interested in writing essential utilities that don't have the glamor > of hacking the kernel or the X server. Yes, exactly the #1 problem in both camps. Everyone builds foundations, but no one build walls. The only thing you can do is correct crooked places in your foundations to make it trivial for others to build straight walls. If I have a good foundation, the walls don't matter: I can put my roof on posts that go to the foundation, and if someone wants walls, they can haul in bales of straw, cover them in chicken wire, and stucco the chicken wire to get walls. If the foundation (the exposed interface) for the config file weren't pretty much "read only", there's be a config writing tool for XFree86 already. If there was a common device configuration API in FreeBSD, there would be an "add_disk" utility. > Some have asserted that it's too much to ask people to change a line > in their XF86Config file from "XkbSymbols us(pc101)" to "XkbSymbols > us(pc101)+de" because that's "hacker meat." Frankly this rates as one > of the more specious arguments I've ever heard. This isn't Micro$oft > Windoze after all. Frankly, it is "hacker meat". Like adding a disk in FreeBSD. "Micro$oft Windoze" is successful because it "fixes" these "problems". Note the quote marks -- they denote target market issues which you are both ignoring. If the "Micro$oft Windoze" market is the one you want to take over, well then the "hacker meat" has to go -- or be hidden by uniformity. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.
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